April 19th, 2014

Trek Factory Racing Service Course Tour

Bill Schieken

The Trek Factory Racing service course opened in November 2013 in a nondescript semi-industrial area of Deinze, Belgium, which is 20 minutes west of Gent and an easy drive to most of the spring classics. Freddie Stouffer, TFR Operations Manager, gave us a tour of the service course on the Tuesday between the cobbled classics, Ronde Van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix. Dan Tille and Rusty Williford of Fulcrum Coaching joined me and did a great job grilling Stouffer on the inter-workings of the service course while I took photos and tried not to break anything.

Absent the team car parked outside, you would have no idea the TFR service course was here.

The owner of the building, who like most in Belgium is a huge cycling fan, allowed the Trek staff to design and build out the inside of the warehouse space to their liking. Since they have only done new construction to half of the facility, we get a good look of the before and after.

Warehouse.sidebyside2 — The top image is unfinished warehouse and where the team vehicles are housed. The bottom is the built out service course with rooms for bikes, soft goods, food, a wash station and showers.

The soft goods room has all of the shoes, kits, helmets and casual clothing. It’s basically a big closet. The bins are there to restock riders with kits and necessary items. If a rider crashes and rips a kit, the service course gets an email from the soigneurs indicating what is needed and the new items are made available in the rider’s personalized bin. “It’s like our own post office,” Stouffer explained.

When new kit comes in, or when a rider needs a piece of clothing, it is kept here. Bin contents are then loaded into race vehicles.

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